Read Online The Winter Queen by Boris Akunin, Andrew Bromfield - Free Book Online Page A

tempted?”
    “Hippolyte, I believe I warned you!” The goddess hurled her thunderbolt at him. “I shall not say it again! Not a single word about that !”
    Hippolyte instantly fell silent and even spread his arms wide as if to show that his lips were sealed.
    Meanwhile, the adroit captain was already collecting forfeits in his cap. Erast Fandorin put in his father’s cambric handkerchief with the monogram P.F .
    Plump Anton Ivanovich was entrusted with making the draw.
    First he drew out of the cap the cigar that he himself had placed there and asked ingratiatingly, “What am I bid for this fine thing?”
    “The hole from a doughnut,” replied Cleopatra, with her face turned toward the wall, and everyone except the plump gentleman laughed in malicious delight.
    “And for this?” Anton Ivanovich indifferently drew out the captain’s silver pencil.
    “Last year’s snow.”
    Then came a medallion watch (‘a fish’s ears’), a playing card (‘ mes condoléances ), some phosphorous matches (‘Napoleon’s right eye’), an amber cigarette holder (‘much ado about nothing’), a hundred-ruble banknote (‘three times nothing’), a tortoiseshell comb (‘four times nothing’), a grape (‘Orest Kirillovich’s thick locks’—prolonged laughter at the expense of an absolutely bald gentleman wearing the order of St. Vladimir in his buttonhole), a carnation (‘to that one—never, not for anything’). Only two forfeits remained in the cap: Erast Fandorin’s handkerchief and Akhtyrtsev’s gold ring. When the ring gleamed and sparkled in the caller’s fingers, the student leaned forward urgently, and Fandorin saw beads of sweat stand out on the pimply forehead.
    “Shall I give it to this one, then?” drawled Amalia Bezhetskaya, who was clearly a little bored with amusing her public. Akhtyrtsev rose halfway to his feet, unable to believe his luck, and lifted the pince-nez off his nose. “But, no, I don’t think so—not this one, the final one,” their tormentress concluded.
    Everyone turned toward Erast Fandorin, paying serious attention to him for the first time. During the preceding minutes, as his chances had improved, his mind had been working ever more frantically to decide what he should do if he won. Now his doubts had been settled. It must be fate.
    And then Akhtyrtsev jumped to his feet, came running over to him, and whispered fervently, “Let me have it, I implore you. What is it to you…you’re here for the first time, but my fate depends on it…Sell it to me, at least. How much? Do you want five hundred? A thousand? More?”
    With a calm decisiveness that surprised even him, Erast Fandorin pushed the whispering student aside, walked over to their hostess, and asked with a bow, “Where shall we go?”
    She looked at Fandorin with amused curiosity. Her stare set his head spinning.
    “Over there will do—in the corner. I should be afraid to go somewhere alone with anyone as bold as you.”
    Disregarding the mocking laughter of the others, Erast Fandorin followed her to the far corner of the hall and lowered himself onto a divan with a carved wooden back. Amalia Kazimirovna set apakhitosa in a silver cigarette holder, lit it from a candle, and inhaled deliriously.
    “Well, and how much did Nikolai Stepanich offer you for me? I could tell what he was whispering to you.”
    “A thousand rubles,” Fandorin replied honestly, “and then he offered more.”
    Cleopatra’s agate eyes glinted maliciously. “Oho, how very impatient he is! So you must be a millionaire?”
    “No, I’m not rich,” Erast Fandorin said modestly. “But I consider it dishonorable to sell my luck.”
    The other guests grew weary of trying to eavesdrop on their conversation—they could not hear anything in any case—and they broke up into small groups and struck up conversations of their own, although from time to time every one of them kept glancing over at the far corner.
    Meanwhile, Cleopatra surveyed her